Thus she planned. They came down and spent the night at a small town on the border, at an inn dirty as all inns are dirty, and she was bitten by bedbugs besides. This made her angry and she told the innkeeper so before she left in the morning. The innkeeper only grinned, but his wife was not so kind and she cursed the tall foreign-looking girl and said:
“Be sure it is not you I am sorry for but the bedbugs! If they drank your black blood, you have poisoned them. And whoever heard of good honest folk who have no bedbugs and no lice? When such small creatures leave a house luck goes with them.”
“You are an ignorant fool,” Mayli said, “and the enemy is welcome to such as you. What good is it to our country to have such old images as you?”
In the end the pilot besought her to come away and the innkeeper held his hand over his wife’s mouth and so the men parted the two women. And the pilot made the more haste that day so that he could be rid of his charge before night and so brought her to the coast.
Mayli did as she planned and sent by telegraph her message to the puppet. Within a few hours there was his message back again, as she knew it would be, begging her to come and saying that he would prepare a special place for her on the train and that she would be met with his own car. He himself would give her protection and he signed his name plain and openly as the ruler of the land. She smiled sidewise when she saw this, remembering his weak face.
She waited for two days, seeming only a handsome and proud young woman who had money in her hand. She came and went alone and bought herself some new garments and some fine pearls and if she saw anything hateful about this coastal city she did not say so to any of the strangers about her. But she saw, nevertheless, much that was very hateful. There were ruins in many parts and the city was crowded with the beggared and the homeless, not only from her own people but from other parts of the world as well. She saw hungry white faces, the faces of Jews driven out and desperate, and seeking shelter here in this sad place. Half the world was homeless and ruined. But this great and rich city had belonged to her people and why need it have fallen? Alone and knowing no one and refusing the friendly looks of all who wished to know who she was, she brooded on what she saw, and all her passion gathered into anger against the enemy.
In such mood she took the train and found the place prepared for her, and like an angry princess who will not tell the cause of her anger, she went to the city which had been her mother’s childhood home, and by night was there.
… “I am very lonely,” the puppet ruler said, and she knew he wondered whether he could lean still closer toward her and touch her hand. She had grown into a woman since he had seen her last. She looked at him and he knew he could not touch her. He drew back and set his cup down on the table.
“Naturally you are lonely,” she said calmly. “What you have done has cut you off.”
They spoke in the English which both knew equally well.
“But you understand me?” His handsome, weak face besought her understanding. “I am not a traitor. I am a realist. If we recognize the truth, that these East-Ocean people have conquered half our country, the only hope for our future is to work with them. Besides, what I am doing is thoroughly Chinese. History tells us again and again that we have always seemed to yield to our conquerors, but actually we have ruled and our conquerors have died.”
“But in those times we were stronger than our conquerors,” she said. “Are we now?”
She did not say what she thought, that among the company of high enemy officials with whom she had dined she had been terrified by the dark concentrated power in their faces and by the weak and placating good nature in this puppet’s face.
He did not answer. Someone had come into the room, and he turned in instant peevishness, because he had given command that he was not to be disturbed while he was alone with his guest. But when he saw who it was he held back his fretfulness.
“Ah, Wu Lien,” he said, and to Mayli he said, “this is my secretary, a man very faithful to me, who understands me.”
So that brother-in-law had risen as high as this among the enemy, and so it was all even easier than she had planned!
Wu Lien bowed, without looking directly at the handsome woman. He was trained in courtesy by his father, who had been used to selling his goods to rich ladies. Then he said to his master:
“Sir, I grieve to disturb you, but there is bad news.”
The puppet rose at once and they went out and Mayli sat alone thinking of this Wu Lien.
When her host came back, his face was disturbed. “I must excuse myself,” he said. “A frightful thing has happened. A band of men has swept down from the hills and killed the garrison stationed at the foothills. There is not one left.”
“But will you be blamed for it?” Mayli asked him.
“Naturally, somewhat,” he replied. “They know I cannot help such savagery from my own people, and yet I feel its effects.”
Wu Lien had followed him in, and now he turned, wanting to have her gone.
“Take my guest to her rooms,” he said.
Wu Lien bowed and waited for Mayli to follow him.
“Good night,” the puppet said, “tomorrow we will find something to amuse you.”
“Do not trouble yourself,” she said. “I can amuse myself.”
When she was alone with Wu Lien she said, “Is it possible to go about the city tomorrow?”
“With escort, it can be done,” Wu Lien replied.
“And outside the city — may one go?”
“With escort,” he replied again.
She paused. “Need it be soldiers?”
His face was as smooth as a stone.
“You understand,” she said, “it is hard for me to have — enemy soldiers. This city was my mother’s birthplace and mine.”
Thus she tried him, but that face did not change. “I hope to go and visit my mother’s grave,” she said, “for I am her only child.”
He would understand the necessity before Heaven of this, she thought.
He nodded. “I will see whether I cannot go with you myself,” he said. “Then we can leave the guards at least at a distance.”
All she had said was true. Her mother’s grave was in the burial place of her religion, but where she did not know. Yet it seemed to her that if she heard the name of the village she would know it.
“How shall I thank you?” she murmured.
“I need no thanks,” he said bowing.
“But I will find a way to thank you,” she said, and smiled.
Thus they parted, for they were now at the door of her room and she went in. They were rich and comfortable rooms and it was like her that she could enjoy them, though they belonged to the enemy, and she slept well.
… When one has a plan, is it not easy to follow it? She went out the next day, and her host understood too her wish to visit her mother’s grave and he was eager to help her remember the name of the village, and Wu Lien was called in. When he heard that for which he was wanted he said:
“Let me send for my wife, for she grew up in this countryside and her family still lives here, and she knows the names of villages better than I do.”
So without effort Mayli saw Wu Lien’s wife come in, and she knew at once that this was a sister to Pansiao, for the two looked alike, except that the elder had a face more stupid and less pretty than Pansiao had. When Wu Lien’s wife heard what was wanted she thought a while and she said:
“That burial ground must be to the west of my father’s village and I know it well, for it is the only Mohammedan burial place in these parts.”